


For Eternity Be Blind

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Feelings Realization, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally hates having regrets. It's New Year's Eve, and he might die tonight – if he does, regrets are not an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Eternity Be Blind

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Auld Acquaintance.  
> Inspired by [this](http://asofterjustice.tumblr.com/post/21760942285/theres-not-a-word-yet-for-old-friends-who-have).

They say things about seeing your life flash before your eyes. They say things about falling backwards, about losing your grip, about forgetting how to hold your breath. They say things change and things end and you wonder what would have happened if you had taken a right instead of a left, or had said yes instead of no, or had jumped instead of staying where you stood. They say that you have regrets.

Wally hates having regrets.

He hates the overwhelming _need_ of humanity to try to explain death, to try to pretend that there is something that follows it, something filled with wide blue horizons and faces you thought you’d never see again. He wants to believe in something, but he knows he never can. He knows that when he dies, he will rot, and he will have a moment of wishing that he had done something differently, and he will take his last breath with the knowledge that he will never be able to change it now.

That is why he’s afraid.

He had just turned thirteen on the day that he recreated the Flash’s experiment, the day he blew up his own house, the day he had heard ambulance sirens and had his mother crying and had smelled smoke and burned things and had not even thought to process that it was all for him. He had felt himself being lifted into the ambulance and had closed his eyes and had wanted to tell his mother that he was sorry for eating all of the cookies last night, but his throat had been too dry to speak and he had  _hurt_. He had opened his eyes to the blanched fluorescent atmosphere of the hospital and he had never seen his parents look so scared; in all of his three years as Kid Flash, he has thought of their faces as they were in that moment; he has never forgotten them, or the feel of his mother’s arms around him as he had mumbled “I’m hungry”. Every time he faces down a bad guy, he thinks of their faces, and he promises himself that he won’t die, because they don’t deserve that, not again. Not today.

Wally had been afraid to die. He had been afraid of the guilt and the not knowing and the tears and the rips in the earth and the certainty that he could never fix the mistakes he had procrastinated on. He was fourteen when he met Professor Zoom for the first time. It was also the first time he had ever cried on-duty.

He doesn’t like to remember. He doesn’t like to remember the boiling twisting in his gut that made him want to vomit; he doesn’t like to remember Uncle Barry shouting for him to _run_ ; he doesn’t like to remember not being fast enough. _He has never been fast enough_. That had been the first time he had ever really thought about it, about oblivion and wondering and eroding into the earth as if he had never been a part of it at all. Uncle Barry had told him not to think of it that way, but he hadn’t been able to help it. Since then, Wally had not _stopped_ thinking about death.

He thought he had gotten over it, for a while. Then the exercise happened, and Artemis had burned away before his eyes without even saying good-bye, and everything had descended on him at once, a crippling conviction that he had done absolutely everything wrong and would never be able to fix it; he had been so desperate to avoid the permanence of her absence that he had deluded himself into thinking the impossible, into doggedly pursuing any vague possibility that she was alive. But then, Aqualad had shoved him through the zeta tube and Wally had felt sick when he hadn’t followed; M’gann had fallen to her knees and Conner had been _gone_ ; and finally, in the humming hot bowels of the mothership, he had looked Robin in the eye and he had known that it was time to die. And he had run out into the open with his best friend beside him and he had still felt afraid. He hadn’t breathed. He hadn’t blinked. There was no need to anymore. And he had thought to himself, _I’ll never get to go home. I’ll never go to prom. I’ll never get to try out for the baseball team. I’ll never get to smell the summer again. I’ll never get to wake up Christmas morning. I’ll never get to say happy birthday to someone again. I’ll never get to run before it’s morning. I’ll never get to tell anyone I’m sorry. I’ll never see space. I’ll never—_

“Rob!” he had shouted just before the disintegration ray had hit him. “Thanks for—!”

 _Everything_.

And it had all been a lie. He had woken up with a great gasp and his body had shuddered upwards and his broken arm had ached in its cast, and he had never been dead after all. That just made it worse. Knowing death, experiencing death – _living through death_. He had been certain that he would never close his eyes again for fear of not being able to open them. He had wanted to take all five of the others and just _hug_ them until their imprints were left permanently on him, until he was certain that he would never lose them again, even if he himself was one day lost. But he hadn’t. He had blinked once, twice, glanced over at Artemis, exhaled, and gone into the bathroom to throw up.

▲

He can smell her now. There is a horrendous whistling and howling sound around him, the empty sensation of space, the agony and burning of his own limbs as he clenches her bow, the only thing keeping him from spinning out into space without a sound. She is screaming with exertion beside him, her eyes tightly closed.

He can feel her back against him, straining. He had specifically arranged it so that he would be able to hold onto her if she couldn’t keep her grip, so that if he couldn’t keep _his_ , he wouldn’t drag her with him. He can’t inhale; it hurts too much. He wrenches his eyes closed and grits his teeth and there is darkness.

Darkness, and maybe the sound of the ocean or the woods in the summer, of cicadas and crickets and the wind tearing through his ears, and the vague vestige of a sunset he had once seen when he had ridden his bike to the top of a mountain, and the smell of almonds and motor oil and the feel of a form beside him on the couch as the fire crumbled away in the night – and his mother’s hand in his and his father throwing the baseball and two tumultuously gray eyes flashing into his and Kent Nelson giving him the most bizarre advice he had ever had the displeasure of hearing. 

He thinks of Dick laughing at him. He thinks of Kaldur permitting himself a warm smile. He thinks of Conner as he saw the moon for the first time. He thinks of M’gann’s apple green cheeks and her jade-colored bruises and her ever-sweet indulgence. He thinks of Uncle Barry giving him a high-five when he was ten. He thinks of Queen Perdita and her wide green eyes. He thinks of mowing the lawn when he was six and being paid five whole dollars. He thinks of the view of Central City from the top of the radio tower. He thinks of wanting to be a superhero when he grew up, of wanting to protect the world from what was cruel and frightening, and he wonders if he’s done a good job so far.

He forces one eye open to gaze at Artemis, her face twisted into a pained shape, her hair tearing past him, her cheeks grimy with sweat and dirt. He remembers seeing her for the first time, smirking down at him and tilting her chin and generally seeming like the bane of his existence two minutes in. That’s when the process begins, the eternal cycle of remembering all of his mistakes, all of his errors and blunders, all of the things he would do if he could. 

_What will happen if they let go?_

His breath hitches. He’ll never have apologized for being an idiot with the Cheshire and Sportsmaster thing. He’ll never have thanked her for saving his butt against Amazo. He’s been meaning to tell her that he threw that tracker into the harbor last night, and that he wants his sai back, thank you very much. He’ll never have admitted that in Bialya, maybe he hadn’t wanted to let go of her hand; maybe being her ninja boyfriend didn’t sound like such a bad gig. Maybe he’d only been half-kidding about it. 

He’ll never be able to tell her that she has a nice smile, that her nose wrinkles up when she laughs and that it looks kind of cute, that she really shouldn’t be shooting his uncle with explosive arrows, that if he dies today, if they both die today, it will have been worth it.

It will have been worth it. The explosion that had given him his powers. The hunger pains. The running. The not-breathing. The protecting, the hero-ing, the dreaming, the wishing, the regretting, the wanting, the pride, the shame, the Team, _Artemis_. 

He’s found her, he realizes. The girl who smells like exhaustion and dust and pine needles, whose yells echo in his ear like drums: this is his… _spitfire_. It’s such a stupid word. Seriously. _What a stupid word_. But here she is: just as fragile and afraid as he is, just as brave, and he might love her just a little bit for being so indecipherable and _great_.

He wants to shout all of this in her ear until he can no longer speak, but it is so loud and terrifying and he can’t even move, but she’s _right here_. How could he have never noticed?

This is Artemis. The girl he used to make fun of, the girl who still hasn’t grown out of making fun of _him_ , the girl whose dad probably wants her to kill him, the girl who made him a sling in the swamp, the girl who thought to bring an extra rebreather, the girl who tried to get him to believe in magic, the girl who is still  _so_ not the boss of him, the girl who went charging at Cheshire with a sword just so she’d leave him alone, the girl who thinks all of the stupid things he says sound fine out loud, the girl who burned into nothing in the snow, the girl he would’ve fought a ship full of aliens to find, the girl who told him about M’gann and Conner like it was nothing, the girl he found in the desert, the girl who is beautiful, the girl who makes his life both miserable and generally okay.

He can’t close his eyes, even though they’re dry and crusting around the edges from the gust. Artemis’s jaw is tight, pressed against his cheek. The stark and searing presence of her, dangling in the air, her arms parallel to his, all but consumes him. It will have all been worth it, he thinks. It will all have been enough.

He lets go of the bow with one arm, letting the other wrap around her waist. He can hear Kaldur straining, and he hears a great beeping noise, and a thunderous _boom_ , and he and Artemis are dropped to the floor like stones.

They prop themselves up and look at each other simultaneously. Wally’s eyes find hers in an instant. Hers are wide, frightened, bewildered. He wants to reach out and touch her cheek and tell her that Baywatch is the stupidest nickname he’s ever heard. He wants to feel her beneath his palms, _alive_ , very much _not dead_. They’ll survive to fight another day. He wants to take the chance he never dared to, never thought to; he wants to take her face in his hands and _kiss_ her, to tell her everything he thought just a second ago, and maybe he wants a cheeseburger, too—

But she stands. And he stands. She produces the Starrotech cure, three of them, and nods to him, her dark eyebrows low. He takes a deep breath and turns away, snatching them from her hand.

They have work to do.


End file.
